Another game, another challenge met, another standard set.
Liverpool did not just underline their status as serious title challengers with their latest resounding home win, they enhanced it. Less than 24 hours after Chelsea did likewise with a commanding victory of their own against Everton, Liverpool responded in what is becoming their customary style, laying waste to a Watford side which arrived at Anfield with a reputation for the parsimonious but left having been brutally ripped apart.
In doing so, Liverpool went to the top of the Premier League, a position that no one can deny is deserved given the testing start to the season they had and the football that they have played in the majority of their games. When the fixture list was revealed in June and they were handed the toughest start of any of the leading clubs, few anticipated that Liverpool, on the back of a negative net spend, would ascend to the summit by the first week of November. But that’s where they are and, should they sustain this form, Jurgen Klopp’s side will take some shifting.
What made their eighth win in their first eleven games so impressive was not the margin of victory or the variety of goals they scored, it was their recently found ability to turn it on seemingly at will. There is nothing forced about Liverpool when they play like this, they just ease through the gears until reaching a level at which their opponents are unable to cope and then open them up.
Watford stayed in the game for 27 minutes, during which time Liverpool could have scored three times despite being nowhere near full throttle, but from the moment Sadio Mane scored his first ever Premier League headed goal from a clever corner routine they were reduced to impotency as the hosts swarmed over them from all areas of the pitch. This was a team, it should not be forgotten, who came into this fixture having conceded no goals in any of their previous three games, but departed this one at half-time in the knowledge that they could have already shipped six.
Watford’s best hope of taking an unexpected three points from the venue where they recorded their first ever Premier League win 17 years earlier rested on Liverpool feeling the pressure that inevitably accompanies the knowledge that victory will take you to the top of the league. Liverpool, though, did not even blink. If anything they were calmer and more measured in their approach than they have been for much of an increasingly impressive campaign. This was not the wild boys, as Klopp likes to call them, it was a team which is so assured in what they are doing and so comfortable with how they want to do it that they are now able to relax when the pressure is on.
That sense of ease was evident throughout an affair that was every bit as one-sided as Chelsea’s annihilation of Everton had been the day before, although Klopp will be disappointed that, unlike Antonio Conte’s side, his own was unable to keep a clean sheet. Unlike on previous occasions that owed more to Liverpool becoming overly confident at 5-0 up than it did to defensive weakness. Not a bad problem to have, of course, but Klopp will know that in what is shaping up to be a particularly tight title race, even the smallest weaknesses might need to be eradicated.
That Liverpool were in a position to become complacent will please him immensely, though. Mane’s opener was followed up by a typically impudent goal from Philippe Coutinho before Emre Can arrived at the back post to meet Adam Lallana’s cross with a perfectly placed header past Costel Pantilimon who had replaced the injured Heurelho Gomes. The half-time interval allowed Watford some respite but the onslaught continued after the break with Roberto Firmino and Mane adding a fourth and a fifth.
It was during that spell that those on the Kop felt able to enjoy themselves rather than just admiring the latest impressive performance of the team that they pay to watch. A chant of “Liverpool, Liverpool top of the league,” rolled off the stand, followed by a chorus of “If Suarez was still here, he’d be on the bench.” Only one of those two songs was accurate but it was the one that mattered most. Liverpool are top of the league and the challenge now for Klopp is to handle the raised expectations.
Having long since recognised the need to be able to deal with that “problem” Klopp used his programme notes to try to disarm those whom he believes might be trying to kill Liverpool with kindness.
‘I notice that lots of people are singing nice songs about us at the moment,’ the Liverpool manager wrote.
‘I don’t mind this. I suppose it is better than singing sad songs. But it is absolutely not important and not relevant. I don’t mean our supporters by the way. I want them to sing happy songs about us as often as they wish. I mean those on the outside looking in, who talk about us and what might be possible or not.’
As Georginio Wijnaldum struck a sixth goal – in doing so matching Chelsea’s margin of victory – the reality will have dawned on Klopp that the number of those on the outside looking in who are recognising the possibilities for his team will have risen still further. That is another challenge that Liverpool and Klopp must meet if their early season form is to become something more significant, but it is also the kind of test that every manager and team wants to face.
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